Radical woman lawyer guilty of aiding terrorists

The left and the Islamic terrorist front - here's one connection that's come to an end!

Eason Jordan out - That's 3 against 1

On the right side of the ledger in downing MSM (Main stream Media) -

1) Eason Jordan (CNN linked article above puts his departure in the Entertainment section!!!)

2) Dan Rather (with Mary Mapes et al - CBS media employees)

3) Howell Raines (and Gerald Boyd - NY Times - over Jayson Blair etc)


But the left side of the ledger has recently drawn blood -
Jeff Gannon - Talon (and therefore GOP USA) reporter at the White House has quit

Unless they can move the story higher - with dubious allegations connecting Karl Rove and Gannon to the Valerie Plame CIA "outing / Wilson yellowcake thing - hardly seems even yet.

_______________________

Look for this blog to shortly review," The Revolution will not be Televised" - Dean's campaign manager (Joe Trippi) outlining how the internet got Dean as far as he did. And what the future holds. ( The left's answer to Hugh Hewitt's opus "BLOG")

Canons of Conservatism - part 2

At the risk of having my arguments quickly shredded by noncognitivist logic, I still hold out for Canon 1 key points. I think we can all agree a conservative needs a set of moral values to hold “which rules society as well as conscience”. But alternatives such as appealing to authority or to a consensus of traditional values is nowhere near as strong as appealing to transcendent truths.

Be that as it may, I am interested in your line of argument that the “ability to reach a set of moral rules from several different starting points is a sign of the strength of those rules.” This line of argument can solve 3 problems – 1) how noncognitivists and transcendentalists (with a small t) can agree, at least on other tenets of conservatism, 2) how the “family resemblance” self -identification as conservatives may work on a generational basis, 3) resolving an obvious weakness of American conservatism being based on “radical” ideals of democracy and equality

Because one of the obvious weaknesses of my formulation of Kirk’s canon and applying it to American modern conservatism is that the same founding documents of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, etc as the foundation of our heritage are also used by liberals as the source of their ideals. How does conservatism then differ from liberalism? Beyond saying that liberalism is looking forward – extending ideals and “rights” – and is thus “progressive” and conservatism tends to look back both to “preserve” freedoms but to remind us of obligations, both are seeking to strive for ideals. The classical liberalism of 50 years ago in many respects has become the standards of conservatism. Instead of quoting Washington, Adams or Lincoln, today George W Bush in appealing to conservative principles seems to be “channeling” John F. Kennedy.

I learned conservative values at my mother’s knee and from Biblical precepts that founded my church (even as most denominations speedily departed from those precepts). I never much rebelled from this understanding of life and politics even in the revolutionary sixties and my college years. But in addition to gaining a historical overview of ideas and a somewhat undistinguished ability to analyze such ideas to present circumstances, I hopefully lost some of the racial and pariochal ideas of my parent’s generation.
Meanwhile, many others have come to the conservative cause in very different ways. Basically they may have been dragged kicking and screaming by their intellect over the course of years while everything inside them cried out for continued rebellion against the Establishment. They didn’t like the political system, the economic system, the international system, organized religion, etc. Those academic and social authorities who championed this revolution could not even like themselves – since they had to define themselves as White Anglo Saxon Protestant male chauvinists part of a hopelessly consumerist & traditionalist society in a capitalist / imperialist state. As the post modern era dawned (is this simultaneous with the Age of Aquarius or what?) and then the Iron Curtain fell, the choice faced all of us. To deconstruct our heritage into a multicultural soup of past grievances, present rights and entitlements, and future evolution by a potent mix of ecology and technology – this is what is left for the Left. Or to reconstruct our values, keeping what is important to our society, especially the unique strengths of our constitutional federal republic.

Canons of Conservatism

Here are my thoughts on someone's thoughts about Russell Kirk's (no relation to Lake Avenue's Pastor Gordon Kirk) conclusions on conservatism (click link in title).

Part 1

I would say that the first canon is a cornerstone and I hope Mr. Burgess-Jackson is misunderstanding it because to reject it outright would lead me to believe that he is not a conservative. He may be reading it as the transcendent moral order and natural law must be code for "fundamentalist Judeo-Christian principles". While many conservatives, including myself, do thus ascribe, Kirk does not specify this. It could vary well mean classical Aristolean ideals or some other traditional construct of moral ideals and sense of community of which there are many in the world.But to not have any set of moral ideals or ethical truths, really means that a conservative would have nothing to conserve. A conservative does not defend the status quo or calls to restoration to the "good old days" for its own sake, that is traditionalism in its worst sense. He or she does not call for conservation of a system even solely because it continues or restores relative security and prosperity, that is sheer pragmatism. A conservative believes that a set of values has proved best for the preservation of the society and though those values may be worked out differently as a culture grows and becomes more complex, he or she tends to believe those values come from moral and social principles that permanently guides the affairs of man. Such as there are absolutes of good and evil, that man is inherently weak but must strive for eternal virtues. The principles in and behind many of our founding documents such as the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution can be seen as either blandly deist or profoundly Christian but once set as the foundation of our society, their radical nature upon the world stage also becomes the foundation of our conservative values.

Here's your sign 

High Tech Lynching in Progress

Instead of responding to the Eason Jordan Davos meltdown, CNN is leading the counter-charge.
CNN.com lead story-
Critics question Pentagon web sites - linking this somehow to journalists in the government's pay.
Doesn't anyone remember US sponsored Radio Free Europe, didn't it, like, help "Free Europe"?


But then piling it on. Maggie Gallagher on the defense, White House response and going for the jugular, "Armstrong Willams axed"
It seems that Tribune Media fired him but now the Nat'l Association of Black Journalists have asked all media "to drop him" - in other words, a "black"-listing, make him disappear.
Even if there was "conflict of interest", and he admitted as much, this is an outrageous full-court press to silence the man forever, or at least until the NABJ deigns to restore him!!

Black Conservatives in Pasadena?

Here's something interesting - a shifting loyalty in African American church from liberal to biblical values.

Funny, then today in the Pasadena Star News, my favorite liberal commentator, Gerald Plessner speaks out against the Republicans for bringing in the racist Southern Democrats. I agree that was wrong, perhaps sinful opportunism.

But that's 35 years ago. Is it time for new coalitions??